Famine in Niger - Questions & Answers
Where is Niger?
What caused the famine in Niger?
How widespread is poverty in Niger?
What does poverty have to do with famine?
Could the crisis in the Niger have been prevented?
What can I do?
Are there other impending crises we can prevent?
Where is Niger?
Niger is a landlocked West African country that borders the Sahara desert. About 12 million people live there.
What caused the famine in Niger?
Many point to a drought and the worst infestation of locusts (which eat crops) in years. Actually, it's more complicated than that. The lack of rain and locusts were the immediate causes of the famine, but its roots lie in the chronic poverty of Niger.
How widespread is poverty in Niger?
Every year, the UN ranks countries overall quality of life based on a series of factors such as access to clean water and health care. By the most recent one, Niger ranked second to last—176th of 177 countries; the U.S. ranked 8th. For every 1,000 babies born in Niger, 265 will die before they reach the age of five, compared to eight in the U.S. Only 17 percent of adults in Niger can read and less than one in five children is enrolled in school. See other statistics about Niger>>
What does poverty have to do with famine?
For people who live in extreme poverty, everyday life is a struggle to survive. A single problem—oftentimes an unpredictable one—can mean the difference between life and death.
Imagine you're a farmer, like many people in Niger, and you have very little in the way of savings. One year, locusts arrive and eat more than half of your crop. The food that's left is not enough to feed your family until the next harvest, let alone sell some for profit. What can you do? Now imagine you raise cattle and a short drought dries out the pastures where they feed. If you have no savings and all of your livestock die, what keeps you from going hungry?
In both cases, as a poor person living in a poor country, your survival always hangs in the balance. Without clean drinking water and access to health services, you are just one failed crop or drought away from starvation.
So, when people blame a drought and locusts for the famine in Niger, they are missing a much bigger point. In underdeveloped countries, poor people have nothing to fall back on when things go wrong.
Could the crisis in the Niger have been prevented?
Yes. At the end of the last year, after the drought and assault of locusts devastated harvests, many of the people in Niger realized that they were at risk. To avoid a crisis, the government of Niger appealed to the UN, and the UN in turn made a call for international support. That was in November 2004, but their appeals for assistance were not met.
As time passed, the condition of the people in Niger worsened. Again, the UN made appeals to the international community for assistance—in March and in May. Again, the international community failed to deliver. It was not until July, when images of starving people began to appear in the press, that the international community began to respond.
By most recent estimates, approximately 2.5 million people in Niger, more than one-fifth of the population, are at risk of starving. This crisis could have been averted. According to the UN, when the first appeal for help was made last November, $1 per day per person would have been enough to assist people who didn't have enough to eat; now, relief agencies will have to spend an average of $80 per day per person to help severely malnourished people. Read a more detailed timeline of the evolution of the crisis>>
What can I do?
There are two kinds of actions you can take. The first is an immediate one. Over 2.5 million people in Niger are in danger of starving and need help now. The UN is currently requesting over $56 million to help them; so far, donor countries have only given $22 million. The U.S., the wealthiest country in the world, has only donated $2.6 million, less than five percent of what's needed. So long as these funding needs are not met, people will go hungry. Urge U.S. leaders to meet the needs of the starving people in Niger now by donating more money to emergency relief>>
The second action is a long-term one. If we want to prevent crises like the one in Niger, we need to address their root cause: extreme poverty. So long as people live one step away from starvation, as they do in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the crisis in Niger will repeat itself.
How do we eradicate extreme poverty? We invest in the long-term development of poor countries by promoting education, health, clean water, environmental sustainability and other initiatives that foster the well-being of communities. By empowering the poor, we'll make them more self-sufficient and build safeguards that protect them from future calamities. Become a committed advocate of the world’s poor. Educate people about the famine in Niger and global poverty>>
Are there other impending crises we can prevent?
Niger is not the only country in West Africa that has been hit with a food crisis. Similar conditions throughout the region—a lethal mix of chronic poverty, drought and locusts—have led to food crises in Mali, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. At present, the situation in these countries is not as severe as in Niger. However, if the international community waits too long to address these potential famines and the conditions which foster poverty, as it did with Niger, millions more people will be pushed to starvation.
